Fire resistant enclosures are used to protect valuables, such as documents, from destruction by fire. Due to the importance of these valuables, delivering high quality products able to meet or exceed the performance characteristics for which the enclosure is designed is of utmost importance to the enclosure manufacturer.
A typical fire resistant enclosure includes a lid hingedly coupled with a base to define a storage compartment for storing and protecting valuables. Both the lid and the base include inner and outer shells that define an insulation cavity that may be filled with an insulation material that later cures within the insulation cavity to provide fire resistance. One method of forming the lid and base is by injection molding. For example, when forming either the lid and the base in existing injection molded safes, two separately injection molded shells are formed and subsequently joined together by welding. Welding the two injection molded shells creates a seam where the two shells were joined. The seam that is created in existing injection molded safes is typically in a location that is in direct contact or exposed to the insulation material that is filled within the insulation cavity, which has a number of drawbacks and deficiencies.
The quality of the seal between the shells is affected by the joining process itself and other factors such as the quality, uniformity, and cleanliness of the mating surfaces between the two shells. If the quality and uniformity of the welded seam is compromised during the joining process, by the characteristics of the mating surfaces of the shells, or by some other factor, the fire resistant insulation material may leak through the seam after it is placed in the insulation cavity, and prior to curing. The occurrence of an insulation leak through a seam may indicate that the integrity of the bond between the two shells that were welded together to form either the lid or the base is compromised. Therefore, the lid or base that leaked insulation through its seam may need to be discarded because of its failure to meet quality control standards due to a structural deficiency in the bonding of the shells. Moreover, if insulation leaks through the seam joining the shells, then an insufficient amount of insulation material may be left within the insulation cavity to obtain the desired fire test rating. In this case, re-welding the seam and refilling the insulation cavity with additional fire resistant insulation material will result in increased manufacturing costs. For these and other reasons, injection molded fire resistant enclosures that include seams in direct contact with liquid insulation materials during their manufacture are problematic.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide an injection molded fire resistant enclosure constructed with outer casing portions that include no seams between separate components that are in contact with fire resistant insulation materials so that no insulation material will leak through the seams.